Some Early Pan African Nationalists

There were several forerunners to the Back to Africa/Pan Africanist concept
of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey; some of them actually laid the
groundwork for a return to Mother Africa. I will briefly discuss some of
them and their passionate ideas for repatriation.

Edward Wilmot Blyden was a very vociferous race man; he studied the great
achievements of Africans in an attempt to dispel the racist myths about
Africa and Africans. He strongly believed that each Black man should strive
to project himself as a distinctive African personality. He intellectually
immersed himself, totally, in African life and customs.

He published fifteen of his articles and essays under the title,
Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. One of these articles,
Mohammedanism in West Africa, was written for the Methodist Quarterly
Review. After two expeditions into the interior of Sierra Leone, he wrote
another article, Mohammedanism and the Negro Race. Blyden never ceased to
laud the Muslims for their ban on alcoholic drinks, their devotion to
knowledge, and the stimulus they gave to artisan crafts and trade.

He seemed convinced that it was the African convert to Mohammedanism and
the Negro colonist from Christian countries who most advanced civilization in
equatorial Africa. He believed that Mohammedanism with its structured
worship, literature, and political, social and economic institutions would
rapidly supersede a detrimental and debilitating paganism. The reader must
bear in mind that Blyden, while an intellectual Pan Africanist, was still a
mental Victorian Christian, who was challenging Christians to acknowledge
Africans by elevating Islam over the creed of Christianity--Blyden never
became Muslim in the sense that he took a verbal declaration (Shahada).

He constantly attacked Christianity for having imposed racial inequalities
upon Black people, and felt that the absence of pictorial representation in
Islamic societies had saved Blacks from always having distinguished and
saintly people depicted to them as white.
Among the first lessons the African convert learned in Islam was that a man
of his own race, Bilal Ibn Rabah, an African, assisted in the birth of the
religion he was to accept. In subsequent study, the African's imagination
never for one moment endowed the great men of whom he heard or read with
physical attributes essentially different from his own.

There is no doubt that Blyden's philosophy contributed greatly to historical
roots of African Nationalism and Pan Africanism. He should be considered one
of the great forerunners of Pan African thought and African Islamism. His
racial, nationalistic, and African Islamic thought, directly, or indirectly,
influenced Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, George Padmore, and Marcus
Garvey. It might be safe to say that Blyden reinforced Duse Muhammad Ali's
Islamic, African nationalism. I will discuss that later.

It is important to reiterate that though Blyden was a religious nationalist
(missionary), he often contended and condemned Christianity, from an
Europeanized standpoint; it had a disruptive and deleterious influence on the
African mind. He considered Islam more appropriate to the basic African
lifestyle. Blyden was/is considered to be the Vindicator of the Race.

Blyden believed that in order for Pan African unity to take place, Liberia
and Sierra Leone should have regular intercourse with the Mohammedan states
of the interior with the aim eventually of incorporating them into the Negro
Republic.

He learned Arabic and taught this language to his students in order for them
to be emissaries to these Muslim states. He was fiercely dedicated to the
creation of a unified Africa for Africans in the Diaspora. There is a statue
of Mr. Blyden in Sierra Leone.

Paul Cuffe:
Paul Cuffe was a noted shipbuilder, captain, philanthropist, and African
nationalist. He supposedly descended from Muslim families of Ghana. His
father was brought to the North American shores at age eleven. His father's
name was Saiz kufu. Kufu, Kofi and Koffee are common surnames in Ghana. The
name was anglicized from Solocum to Cuffe. He was born in Cuttyhunk,
Massachusetts in 1759. After reaching adulthood and acquiring wealth, he
engrossed in Africa and African repatriation. He dedicated his life and
fortune to this venture.

He circumnavigated Africa eighteen times; crossed it from east west three
times and from north to south once. In 1815,he took 38 African Americans to
Sierra Leone on his ship. Paul Cuffe was the first man of African descent to
petition the ruling powers at the time concerning slavery. His document was
addressed to the legislature of New Jersey and asked that it petition the
Congress of the United States to free every slave and allow every colored man
and woman desiring to leave America to be able to do so. This petition gave
birth to the American Colonization Society. Interestingly, excluding David
Walker's Appeal, this was the first manifestation of African nationalism in
America--it had its greatest impact on Marcus Mosiah Garvey in the 1920s.

The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817 just before Cuffe died.
With funds from Caucasian philanthropists and support from federal and some
state governments, it founded Liberia. The society's primary objective was
to resettle free Blacks where they could best use their talents for their own
benefit and for that of Africa. Before the American Civil War, the society
transported 13,000 African Americans to Liberia, most of whom were ex-slaves
whose masters freed them for the purpose of emigration. Needless to say the
Colonization Society became immersed in political and ideological quagmire.
That is another story for discussion.

Captain Harry Dean:
Another African nationalist and a blood relative of Paul
Cuffe was Harry Dean. He, too, was a captain.
Dean was born on November 20,1864,he was the offspring of Susan Cuffe and
John Dean. Captain Dean's family came from Quata, Morocco; for three
generations, they had be wealthy merchants in Philadelphia. Harry Dean
maintained the family Muslim tradition; first during his seafaring days
aboard the Pedro Gorino and later in southern Africa where he sought to build
an African empire. Captain Dean founded the first Black nautical training
school in America.

Captain Dean influenced W. E. B. Dubois in his late Pan African adoption.
As I stated earlier, Dean remained in touch with his Islamic background. He
was not only associated with the Muslim Mosque of London, England, but later
distributed Islamic literature in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle,
Washington.

The following are very significant statements from Dean:
I am an African and proud of it. There's not a drop of white blood in my
veins. My ancestors have been sea captains and merchants and I have spent my
life at sea.

Captain Dean felt that the word Negro was of false derivation, indescriptive,
and in every way unfit for the position it filled in the American language.
He claimed that There is no Negro race, only African races.

Duse Muhammad Ali:
Duse Muhammad Ali, one of Africa's fervent African nationalists, was born of
an Egyptian father and a Sudanese mother in Alexander, Egypt, November 21,
1866. His study and love of history prompted him to him to found his famous
and influential journal The African Times and Orient Review, which began
publication in July 1912,the same year that Edward Wilmot Blyden died.

As an editor, Ali actively supported African nationalism and anti-colonialism
and advocated higher education in Africa. He felt that what was needed most
was a thoroughly equipped university in Africa whose degrees would be
recognized by universities of England. This idea had been voiced earlier by
Edward Blyden. Both of them harbored a Victorian mindset despite their
nationalistic leanings. They had a double ideological consciousness.

Disregarding his Victorian inclinations, his most important contribution to
African nationalism was his effort to awaken students in England to the
importance of African history. He generated in them racial nostalgia for
looking back to past greatness. Ali worked very diligently to show the
achievements of the African ancestors. His profound knowledge of African
history led to his election to membership in the Negro Society for Historical
Research and later to the American Negro Academy. His emphasis on African
history instilled pride in the African students of that period.

Ali's ideas and personality had a profound impact on the philosophy and
organizational policies of Marcus Garvey. Garvey's early political
involvement in Jamaica and his uncompromising racial views prompted him to go
to London in 1912. While in London, he was in contact with many African
students and workers, finally, he became associated with Ali and The African
Times and Orient Review.

Garvey, was an astute student of Ali and tireless worker for the journal. He
absorbed much knowledge about history, geography, Islam, and Africa's mineral
resources. Ali's intense convictions had a magnetic attraction and a
profound influence on Mr. Garvey. In fact, Garvey's slogan, Africa for the
Africans, at home and abroad was indicative of the pride and dignity he
received from Duse Muhammad Ali.

Another of Ali's influence on Garvey can be seen in the Garvey motto One
God, One Aim, One Destiny, the one God aspect being akin to the Islamic
emphasis on the oneness of God or God's unity. In 1918,Garvey began a
newspaper in New York, called The Negro World, on which Ali later worked
during his stay in the United States.

Many pioneer Garveyites, including my grandfather, mentioned the fact that
Mr. Garvey was inspired and taught by a Muslim and many said that he at
times referred to Islam as the Black man's religion. Consider the Garveyite
hymn and its Islamic wording in the first stanza: Father of all creation
Allah Omnipotent
Supreme O'er every nation
God bless our President.

Although Duse Muhammad Ali was a fervent nationalist, he was not, in the
strict sense of the word, embittered. Duse was a race man, intellectually,
who believed strongly in the religion of Islam and in the advancement of
educational standards for Africans in the Diaspora. He devoted his life to
the reconstruction of the economic, moral, and cultural life of African
people. He died June 25,1945; like the forerunners, he contributed much to
the ideological platform of African/Black nationalism.

Suggested Reading:
The reader is encouraged to read Duse Muhammad Ali's prolific and historical
account of modern Egypt: In the Land of the Pharaohs.
For more on Captain Harry Dean, the reader should consult The Pedro Gorino,
by Harry Dean and Sterling North (Houghton Mifflin Company, 19290
For more on Paul Cuffe, the reader should consult the book by Sheldon H.
Harris, Paul Cuffe: Black American and the African Return, (Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1972)